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Don’t Forget The Calls To Action

David Johnson — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:00:07 +0000

It could be as simple as a question or as complex as a button that changes when you mouse over it, whatever it is, from here on out, calls to action are mandatory. Oh, don’t do it just because I told you so, do it because you want your readers to do more, your followers to act and your potential customers to submit a lead.

Let me ask you a question. Do you want your site visitors to just come and go? Rhetorical question I know but without a call to action that’s exactly what will happen. I know most dealerships don’t think about the call to action that much, that’s your website vendors job after all, but what about your blog posts?

You are blogging aren’t you? (That’s for another post)

Everything you write, from here on out should have a clear and concise call to action. If could be a link to another post that you tell your reader to click on, or even a question on a picture you post on Facebook, whatever it is, ask your readers to do more, don’t let them just consume your content and then walk (click?) away.

Speaking of doing something more: To receive your FREE copy of Social Media And The Auto dealer, as well as the bi-weekly Automotive Social Media Newsletter FREE just fill out the short email form below. Don’t worry I hate spam too and will never share your info!

Forget ROI, What Is Your ROE?

Connecting With Your Customers On Facebook – Automotive Social Media Video

David Johnson — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:12:42 +0000

This is video 1, in a series of videos, aimed at teaching the automotive sales person how to harness the power of automotive social media. In this video I will reveal a surefire way for salespeople to connect with and gain testimonials from their customers through the strategic use of Facebook and a not so well known law of human psychology.

As this will be the first video in a series make sure that you get an alert each time I post something new by entering your email address in the section just below this post.

I’d love to hear your comments, what would you like to add?

If I Sold Cars Today – How Would I Do It Differently

David Johnson — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 04:04:04 +0000

The last year that I sold cars, before starting a BDC, was 2003. While 7 years doesn’t seem like that long it was a lifetime in technology, and if I had to do it all over again I’d do it the same way. What? That’s right, I’d do it the same but I would go about it very, very differently. You see, even back when I first started selling cars I understood the value of creating positive, win-win relationships with my customers, in fact, a lot of the things I train on today, in regards to social media, I learned while working lot traffic and building my own book of business.

One of the first things I did when starting my very first job selling cars is have two sets of post cards made, one for sold traffic the other for unsold traffic. The first thing I would do when a customer drove off the lot is send them a post card, maybe it was a post card thanking for them for their business or one thanking them for their time, but every person I spoke to got one in the mail.

Once a month I put a newsletter together with Microsoft Publisher and walked down the street to a printer and had it printed up. I would then address them by hand, stamp them and put them in the mail, one to everybody in my database, whether they bought a car from me or not. I would even clip out magazine or newspaper articles if I found one that would interest one of my customers and mail that to them as well.

I would devote part of my day calling my customers, keeping track of them and building relationships each and every chance I got. I understood that the value was in the relationship, and that relationships were worth more than the commission check I earned from selling them a car, you see I wanted them to come back and buy another car from me and another, I even wanted them to send me referrals, and you know what? They did, and they were happy to do it.

So earlier when I said I would do it the same way I meant it, and by the same way I meant that I would still build relationships, because that’s where the real value comes from. Of course, I would go about it differently because I have so many tools at my disposal today that I would have a much easier time going about it. Back then I would talk to service customers and talk to the HR department of X-plan companies (I worked at a Ford Store) to get more business, all of this took time and I had to do a lot of this stuff on my own time, at home or on my rare days off, but as I look back it was well worth the experience I gained.

But I ask myself now, how would I go about this differently if I sold cars today?

I’d have a blog. On that blog I would write about the same things that I wrote about in my newsletter. I would write funny stories, stories about my family and my experiences as a car salesman. I would still interview the detail manager about how to best take care of leather or how to get those pesky stains out of the upholstery.
I would upload my customer testimonials along with pictures of them enjoying their new vehicles. I would even go so far as to interview them, just like I did for my newsletter, but this time I would blog about how their experience was working with me versus the other guy down the street.
I’d blog about the makes and models at my dealership, really show my passion for the products I sold. I’d use my blog to build relationships, not sell cars. I would let people know, through my actions, not my words, that I wanted to get to know them, that I’m in the car business to take care of them, not to rip their heads off.
I’d have a Facebook profile that I’d use to keep up with my customers. I would upload pictures of them, that I took, just before they left the lot and tag them in it. Then I would go to their Facebook wall and say something nice about them on their wall, on the picture that I tagged them on. I would do that because I know that they would feel compelled to say something nice about me and then all of their friends would see it. A kind of impromptu testimonial.
Then I would listen. I’d watch to see what my customers were talking about so that I could get to know them. I would then find articles online that interest them and post it on their wall with a little note saying that I came across it and thought about them. I would also partner with local businesses and get coupons from them so that I could give them to my customers. I’d give as much as I could, I’d give advice when I could and offer my service whenever I had a chance, even if I had to mow the grass of one of my elderly customers who’s grandson was out of town for two weeks and couldn’t get to it (Yes I did do that).
I’d create videos. Lots and lots of videos. I would create walkarounds that I would post on Youtube, my blog and on Facebook. These wouldn’t be ordinary walkarounds but the fun kind where I see how many people I can fit in the trunk.
I would post videos teaching my customers how to operate the navigation, the memory seating, and any other number of things. I’d get a service tech to show my customers how to check their fluids and the importance of proper maintenance. Whenever one of my customers, or a potential customer wanted to know more info about a particular vehicle I would take a video of the car and show it to them, making sure to use their name in the video. I would then upload their video, with the proper meta tags to Youtube so that they rank in the search engines.
I would have a LinkedIn account where I would connect with as many of the influencers in my market as possible. I would find as many opportunities as I could to refer the people in my network to them. I would do this because I know that the people on LinkedIn carry a lot of authority, and if I could get an endorsement from a few of them, it would bring me more business.
I would go to great lengths to be a connector of people, build as much social capitol as possible so that they would in turn connect people to me.
I would organize as much face to face as possible. I would organize meetups at the dealership where the finance manager could talk about budgeting, credit repair, or the value of gap insurance. I would even have the service manager conduct new car care clinics.
I’d invite customers in to test drive new models so that they could give me their opinions on them, of course I would record the whole thing and upload the videos to Youtube, Facebook and to my blog. I’d organize networking functions so that I could bring my customers even closer together so that they could network and get to know one another.
I would organize giveaways every month, dinners for two, or tickets to the theatre. I would use these to create excitement around me and my dealership.

The Good News

If you’re selling cars you don’t have to wait for customers to walk on the lot, you can build relationships with your past customers at the same time you build relationships with new ones. The hard cost is next to nothing, you could partner with a local restaurant for the free dinners or at least get a discount. Of course, this all takes time, but if you devote just a fraction of your time each day to building relationships, before you know it, you will be working by appointment only.

This is the 21st century and as salespeople we need to use the tools that are available to us to build a community of raving fans around our personal brand. It doesn’t take much work to put a strategy in place but I assure you, once you start building relationships with your customers and take care of them in any way that you can, they will, in return, take care of you. What are you waiting for, get started now!

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If It Can Help a Man Get Elected President, Social Media Can Help You Sell Cars

Social Influence, Not Just For Your Sales Department: A Special Finance Perspective

David Johnson — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:11:01 +0000

In the auto industry social media can play a huge role in brand management by bringing trust, recognition, and awareness to more than just your sales department. It can also boost your service and parts business as well as highlighting specific aspects of your F&I, such as buy here pay here and special finance, the latter of which will be the cornerstone of this post.

The special finance customer is in an uncomfortable spot. This uncomfortableness can quickly lead to stress and anxiety as it surrounds one’s ability to find financing for an automobile. Imagine a young family with one car and two small children, with both parents working outside the home, who run into a bit of bad luck and find themselves needing to replace their car. Knowing their credit is severely lacking they first try their credit union only to be turned down. Hitting a dead end, because they know nothing about subprime lending, their stress levels begin to rise and they start to feel as if they have nowhere to turn.

This type of scenario happens all the time, causing the couple to Google terms like bad credit auto loan, only to find, you guessed it, a third party lead site. From there we all know what happens, but I’d like to ask you, what would happen if they already knew, ahead of time, about your dealerships special finance program, not only that but they already had a level of trust in your capabilities and knew the finance manager, the general sales manager and a few sales people by name? How would the above scenario have gone down differently?

I’m telling you right now that the ONLY reason people go to third party lead sites is because they have no other place to turn except a cold, uncaring search engine, that spit out websites that spend the most money on search engine optimization. Things don’t have to go down this way. You can make your local market more aware of your special finance department by building solid, trust inducing, win-win relationships BEFORE the need for you services ever arise. How? Through the use of social media.

Putting A Strategy In Place

Authority is influence. Having influence is authority. The two go hand in hand and I’m going to show you how to be the authority in your market, through the use of social networking. As Mitch Joel said in his book, Six Pixels of Separation, “People will buy from you and want to stay connected to you, only if they are getting real interaction from a real human being.” So let’s give them interaction!

Step 1: Create a blog. Don’t let that scare you, setting up a blog is much easier that you might think. You can get hosted, or a self-hosted blog, I recommend self-hosted. With a quick search on YouTube I found THIS VIDEO on how to set one up.

Now that you have a blog, let’s start blogging. Keeping in mind that you want to create authority, start creating posts about finances, credit repair, auto financing, banking, and the issues of high interest rates. The idea here is to showcase your knowledge in order to paint yourself as the authority. Don’t use this blog to pitch yourself, just give good information. Create a good about me page that showcases who you are, what you do and what dealership you work for but don’t use your blog as a thinly disguised advertisement. The idea here is to give.

Step 2: Start a Facebook fan page. Odds are you already have one but how are you using it? If you’re using it just to talk about yourself, you have it all wrong. Use it as a place to post links back to your blog, and other articles & blog post that relate. Do a contest or two a month in order to get your fans to engage. Maybe you can give away percentage off coupons, Flip Cams, or dinners for two.

Look for groups in your local market and become part of them. Engage people there as well. Remember to give, showcase your authority, become a person of influence through your actions. Remember, don’t pitch!

Step 3: Create a Twitter account and start tweeting. Twitter is a great way to target you local market, it’s the easiest to build and if done right you can funnel those people to your blog, your Facebook page and to any videos you might want to make. Watch THE VIDEO I created for you on locating people in your local market.

Again, don’t use Twitter to pitch, instead use it to inform and build relationships. Engage tweeters by asking questions and answering theirs. Direct people to your blog and your fan page, keeping in mind that the majority of what you tweet about should have nothing to do with you, it should all be about them.

Going Advanced

I highly recommend video, although it’s not mandatory. It’s very easy to create and to distribute . Video is a great way to build authority and we are already accustomed to sharing them with people we know. Videos, if using the correct titles and descriptions, index in the SERPS (search engine ranking pages) very well.

You could create a series of videos on the topic of credit repair, getting financed with bad credit, or any number of topics that relate to finances in general. Just like in the strategy above the idea is to create authority, to show that you are knowledgeable in your field.

Build authority and they will come. By giving people a place to turn, in times of need, then actually fulfilling that need, you set yourself up to having a lifelong customer that creates other customers. Don’t overlook the idea of building social influence on social networks, it’s a source of endless bounty if you keep their wants and needs in mind. In fact, I feel that it’s bad business NOT to showcase your authority. Get the team together, today, and put a strategy together, today, so that you can stake your claim in the wonderful world of social media.

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Winning Friends and Influencing Word Of Mouth Using Facebook

David Johnson — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:03:25 +0000

I just got off the phone with a very nice lady by the name of Mari. She works at Hawkinson Kia and contacted me after reading a few of my posts, she wanted a few tips on how to manage her Facebook account. While we spoke about a few different things she could do to build her fan base there is one tip in particular that I gave her that I wanted to share with you here and that’s how to influence word of mouth.

While what I’m about to share with you can be used on just about any social network I will be using Facebook as my prime example. I think it best to explain the origin of this technique so you can see how it relates in real life as well as on the internet. Back when I was selling cars, and still to this day, relationships with my customers were very important to me. I would call my whole customer base every other month and on special occasions just to chit chat as well as sending out a monthly newsletter that I would print out at a local print shop.

Besides the phone calls and the newsletters I would clip articles I found in magazines or print out blog posts that related to my customers lives and sent it to them in the mail with a little sticky note that said something to the effect of, “This made me think of you, let me know what you think, enjoy!”

As I told Mari the very first customer I did this for owned his own cabinetry business and while sitting in a doctors office I came across an article on a new type of stain for cabinets. Quietly, so I didn’t draw attention to myself, I ripped the article out of the magazine and stuck it in my pocket so that I could mail it to me customer the next day.

A few days later my customer gave me a call and thanked me for thinking about him. As you can imagine this little act bonded him to me and he bought three more cars from me as well as sent me a few referrals. In all I spent 5 minutes of my time to invest in a relationship with my customer, well worth the time if you ask me!

What’s neat about this is that now you can do the same thing, using Facebook, and influence word of mouth like you never thought possible! Just think about it a moment, people put their lives on Facebook. You know what movies they watch, what their favorite football team is, what they do for a living and what their favorite restaurants are, to name just a few.

This is what I want you to do: take a moment and read a few posts that your friends on Facebook are posting, maybe read their profile and see what they are up to. Then go to Google and search for something that they are interested in. Go to their wall, post the link and a little note of your own and see what happens!

Rinse and repeat.

Tell me what you think in the comment section below, I’d love to read what you have to say!

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